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How does horseradish have the power to turn a roast beef sandwich into something beautiful? How can mustard be so perfect? Who made red and brown sauce so impeccable?

The answer is straight up magic. Hot sauce is one of the best.

Ingredients

200gr chillies (I bought mine from Sainsburys, their own brand red chillies. I asked them on twitter what variety they were as I chucked the packaging and they said they use a mix of Serenade, Fresno, Jalapeño, Hercules and Fire Flame)

2 red peppers

3 cloves of garlic

125ml water

3tbsp honey

1/2tbsp table salt

60ml white wine vinegar

Let’s talk about heat here. Everyone is going to have different preferences on heat. I like hot sauce that is actually edible and tastes of something. Nothing that is going to make me sweat or cry blood. Preference is key here. This is a mildly spicy hot sauce which is fairly fruity. If you want to ramp it up then I’d recommend adding in a few extra hot chillies or something similar.

Method

1, Chop off the stems of the chillis and roughly chop, seeds and all. De-stem and de-seed the red peppers, roughly chop these too. Remove the skins of the garlic cloves. Stick the whole lot in a blender with the water, honey and salt and blitz until you have a pulpy mash.

2, Transfer this into a clean mason jar or a glass bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. This needs to now ferment.

3, It needs a minimum of three days. Stir it daily and check on process. It needs to be a bit bubbly. There is a video on my instagram page if you’re unsure. I did leave mine for three days, some people like to leave it for seven. I am way to impatient for that. (I’ve killed numerous sourdough starters)

4, After three days, it should be bubbling away and have that telltale hot sauce smell.

5, Transfer back into your blender, add in the vinegar and blitz until you can get this as smooth as possible. Work this through a fine sieve to give you a smooth sauce.

6, Stick this into a small saucepan and bring to a really gentle simmer. Reduce the sauce down to your desired consistency. I ended up with about 325ml.

7, Check for seasoning and pour the hot hot sauce into sterilised preserving jars or bottles. This should keep for three months unopened, or four weeks opened. Keep in the fridge once opened. Put on all the things.